Tuesday, January 30, 2007

It was the weekend of sick kids & we still got in a Birthday Party! Yesterday, we went to the Dr to check out Geordan's fever and left to find out that Rianna had been sick at school. Geordan had picked out this jell-o parfait at the cafeteria and only ate one bite. He was much more interested in the cheese pringles and goldfish crackers. I had a baked potato and drew the parfait. His diagnosis was a cold and that he should just keep having ibuporphen to stay comfortable and Robitussin CF for his cold symptoms. They've put Guaifenesin in as an expectorant and Dextromethorphan as the cough supressant so it works pretty well. It's also formulated for adults and children, so we don't have to buy something for each.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

My daughter's been home sick from school all week. Seems like Strep, it's going around, but I can't get her in to see the Dr til tomorrow. She looks so young still when she's asleep. She turned 7 Saturday. It's the cheeks! This was done a little larger than usual... about 8 x 10 in a 9 x 12 sketchbook with charcoal pencil. I haven't used charcoal before, in any form. I like it. I'd like to try some a little softer, this was a General's 2B med charcoal pencil.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Does everyone know about cinnamon sugar toast? Toast, butter, cinnamon, sugar. I mix the cinnamon and sugar in an empty spice bottle so we have it ready. Rianna eats it most days for breakfast and tried to eat some today but it scratched her sore throat. We use wheat bread, going through about a loaf a week, sometimes more. I grew up on Wonder Bread, though. It was supposed to be healthy, or something, now we know better. I have baked bread from scratch, some black rye bread that turned out heavy as a stone, what a texture that had! Our current infatuation is for the dough balls you can buy in the freezer section. You thaw them in the microwave for a few seconds, the put them in a greased pan with greased plastic wrap over them to rise for 2 hours in the oven with the burner off. It stays just warm enough. Then you bake them for 15 minutes, nice and fluffy! I like bread!

Monday, January 22, 2007

Rianna picked out a new kitty at Crown Center Saturday. Tinalina is an orange tabby who sleeps on her own fleece bed and her tummy goes up and down like she's breathing. She's stuffed! It was hard to really define the features of the toy with the pattern in the fur and shadows being very soft. Graphite in my hedgie.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

We got to come to Union Station for a while and run around a little to burn off some of the stir crazies before the snow hit yesterday afternoon. Some little boys with their dad and uncle invited us to play "duck, duck, goose" in the middle of the floor here. Lots of running and squealing! Then we walked across the Link to Crown Center and had lunch at Fritz's train cafe where your food is delivered by trains! When we were done, I checked outside and the snow had started so we headed up to Zoom, the toy store, and the kids picked out a toy each to buy with their Christmas money and we skee-daddled on home just in time!

Thursday, January 18, 2007

After the Master of the Arabian Flute CD by Mohamed Naiem. The flute is an Egyptian Ney or nay, made from reed, it has a haunting sound. I had to make a paper cd envelope for it so I did some of the cover art, too. I left out the calligraphy, but may add it in later with some white ink, if I'm feeling ambitious. General's Layout pencil on 24 pound inkjet paper.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

I recently started a new sketchbook so I had to make a new color chart of my PITT markers. I love these things! The light cool grey lives in my pen case that follows me everywhere. So does the sanguine set, you just never know when you'll want to draw henna designs! I also keep the flesh tones handy, I'm not real great at mixing them in watercolors yet and end up wasting too much time at the park. They've expanded their selection, I think there are 48 colors now, including a lighter flesh-tone and many other lighter shades of colors. 103 and that turquiose are wonderful to use! Danny Gregory used to use them in his journals and I liked what he was doing, and my art store had them on sale, so I bought some. Wish I had some more greens, but they do blend a little while still wet. I run into Utrecht and grab a couple every once in a while, just pocket change really, and will slowly accumulate all of them. Art supplies! Love 'em!

Sunday, January 14, 2007

This is a super-quick gesture sketch of my Cub playing my mountain dulcimer. He really had fun strumming with the picks and trying out notes on frets. I bought it a gazillion years ago at Silver Dollar City on my Open Water dive certification weekend. It was the first trip I'd taken by myself, too. I can still play some tunes on it!

Edit: Yeah, the dulcimer's on his lap backwards, he insisted!

Last night I curled up in the rocking chair with my daughter. We both drew, she in her pink sketchbook with my prismacolor pencils and PITT markers, and I in my hedgie with my sanguine pigma microns.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Sandalwood soap I received from my Secret Santa partner in the Henna Page gift swap. Smells great, but I don't want to use it up! Pencil in my hedgie...that's watercolor paper!

Here's a song I remember from Girl Scouts...

"Oh I wish I were a little bar of soap (bar of soap),Oh I wish I were alittle bar of soap (bar of soap),I'd go slippy, slippy slidey, overeverybody's hidey,Oh I wish I were a little bar of soap (bar ofsoap)!"

Thursday, January 11, 2007

My sketch of the design for the Kauffman Center for Performing Arts being built in KC by Moshe Safdie. My dh is the Zahner Architectural Metals Project Engineer on it! I'm terribly proud of this, Safdie is an internationally known Arch. as is Frank Gehry, whose MIT Stata Center was one of the first buildings Ron did work on when he first went to Zahner. (yeah, I'm throwing names around!)

Monday, January 08, 2007

In my father's house, there is a closet next to the basement door, just inside the kitchen. This closet is next to the chimney for the furnace, so all winter, it's nice and warm inside. This is where we kept the brown paper grocery bags, on the shelf above the coat rack. We used them for our trash bags. Put one under the dropped counter, next to the dishwasher in the island where the sink is. They came from Big V, without handles, with groceries, Wonder Bread, Wheaties, Velveeta cheese, and cans of Del Monte green beans. The ones we get from Sunfresh have handles, Spam, Best Choice wheat bread, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and are next to the fridge holding cardboard boxes, plastic and cans to be recycled.

Saturday, January 06, 2007

This porcelain angel vase has been on my parents' mantle and by my Christmas trees all my life. Delicate porcelain prayers for Peace on Earth.

If you come to my Flickr in the next week or so and see something strange there, fear not. All shall be right soon! All my photos are still there as are all my sets, they are just hiding til Yahoo gets my money order in the mail!

Friday, January 05, 2007

I've been making sketchbooks for a little over a year now. I started in the Everyday Matters Group almost 2 years ago with a Moleskine pocket sketchbook. Loved it, learned to deal with the beading up watercolors, wanted something better by the time I was halfway through the second one. I liked the size and the elastic and the pocket and the ribbon! I surfed Moleskine sites in search of cool hacks and stuff to do and found out about Hedgehogs. Wirewoman's Hedgehogs Forever Yahoo group is full of glorious stuff including instructions for making your own mole look-alikes! I tried it out, modified it, made it mine. Now I am in the middle of a batch of three; watercolor paper pages, fabric covers, pocket Molie size. They are numbers 10, 11 and 12. I've sold one, given one to my dh, another to a friend for a birthday, two typing paper ones to my kids, a henna journal with hand and foot templates to my Secret Santa person, and some for future use. These will have a nice Persian print fabric on them and be filled with love!

I did do a sketch today, I am waiting to see if I'll post it or not...someone else's input is needed...

Thursday, January 04, 2007

I've been inactive for a while, since about May, and am on day 4 drawing again! I finished re-ready "Everyday Matters" this morning and am making a new batch of pocket moleskine-like sketchbooks as this one is on it's last two pages. If you'd like to look, they're on my flickr in the Making Books set here.

Hi to all the new EDM members! I look forward to seeing your work as I go through the links of the challenges and blogs! I am also getting more active on the Botanical and Naturalist group, Hi to you, too!

Rianna's in first grade and has homework every night (!). Tonight it's addition and subtraction of numbers up to 20. She get's real stubborn about getting started so we did some bribery today after some tickling to get her woke up and alert. Rold Gold pretzels are a good bribe for her but I didn't want her filling up before supper, so she only got 1/3 of a stick per right answer!

Drawing what's in front of me at 10am, here's my keyboard. I spend way too much time in front of it...something to cut back on this year. Most of the time is spent wondering if someone's answered a post of mine, commented on a photo or drawing of mine, or done something else of interest to me...

Quite narcisistic, I think.

A certain amount of self-focus is necessary to one's health and well-being, but to the exclusion of getting things done. Just not healthy.